Just finished Half-Sick of Shadows. The review I did on another site follows:

Having read one winner of the Terry Pratchett Prize, Michael Logan's Apocalypse Cow, and found wanting, I decided to try the other winning entry, Half-Sick of Shadows. I had already gained the impression that it was a very different beast to its zombie apocalypse co-winner, but I wondered whether it would be as good, or even better. Time, and reading the book, would only tell...

The Manse: an isolated house in the middle of nowhere, home to the strange Pike family. Edward and Sophia are twins, inseparable, but all that begins to change starting from the day before Granny Hazel is buried. A stranger in a Morris Minor turns up, and asks the five-year-old Edward to be his friend, before leaving in the car that he claims to be a time machine. Not long afterwards, Edward is packed off to boarding school, while Sophia has been told by her father never to leave the Manse, or else she will be cursed. A strange tale unfolds involving life, the universe, and a strange boy known as Alf whose destiny, and that of the twins, may very well be intertwined...

Half-Sick of Shadows is of the same quality as Apocalypse Cow, but for very different reasons. This book is a far more intelligently conceived and written book than Apocalypse Cow, a bildungsroman (or coming of age story) set in the strangest of places. There is something darkly lyrical and even a little magical about the prose, which is a pity, as the story itself doesn't seem to have a point. I dunno whether it's because of my style of reading, or because the clues were too obscure, but I couldn't make too much sense of the ending at all. I get the feeling that David Logan is a fan of David Lynch's work, as this feels like a Lynch film. The connection with parallel universes as required by the rules of the competition is, while intriguing, not fully fleshed out, or at least not explained to my satisfaction. Apocalypse Cow, while not as intelligently written, was more entertaining.

Unlike Apocalypse Cow, the characters feel better fleshed out and less cartoony. Even with the lack of explanation I felt was in the story, one could still believe that they had lives inbetween incidents on the page. Edward is an intriguing protagonist, and the enigmatic Alf, while not quite explained, is still an interesting character all the same. I feel that the residents of the Manse are rather f***ed up, though, feeling like extras from a Stephen King novel made normal.

Half-Sick of Shadows is as good as Apocalypse Cow, albeit for very different reasons. While I give them the same score, I would prefer Apocalypse Cow in terms of sheer, unadulterated entertainment value.

I removed the score before posting it, as I had some controversy over my scoring system here doing a Discworld reading blog.

I have to say, David Logan's prose, I cannot match, and the payoff, while not as great as expected, was good enough. But I have to say that I could write a more entertaining yarn.

I'm sorry, is that the title of a book, or a challenge to write a better story? I'm not being rhetorical or anything, I actually am confused.

If the latter, I am currently 33K words into my current potential entry for the TP Prize. Just another 47K (at least) to go. Better get your dragon and an optic-encephalogram (sorry, couldn't resist a Quatermass and the Pit reference).